in manners, in conversation, in original taste, in genuine sympathy with literature and the arts, or in moral tone. Instead of being a natural aggregation of cultivated men and women, it lives in the public eye and by public artifice. Last year a certain railroad president, let us say, or a wealthy corporation master, was not in the coveted circle. To-day, having become necessary to the success of some cherished scheme, he is able tacitly to exact social recognition of its promoters for his family. In due time, by skilful manipulation, they may become the center of similar activities, until the competitive system, breaking up, by sheer complexity, into groups, resolves itself into a more truly selective society, advancing to higher uses through a reaction of the better element against this deterioration. Just now it is of intense interest as a development of "expansion" at home, and worthy all the attention that the sociologist or the novelist can bestow upon it.

A deplorable feature of this competitive system is that it touches the imagination of those lower in the scale of income, and produces among them a fever of discontent and ambitious unrest. They become a pushing crowd of egotists; their homes lose the simplicity of the old-time American family and become centers of social intrigue; the marriages of their children are, if not actually arranged, then promoted, with an eye to the main chance; they hang upon the triumphs of the society column; they give themselves over to fashionable vices, such as gambling at bridge whist, scandal-mongering, and sycophancy, until their peace of mind becomes a thing of the past, and they lose their sense of the perspective and dignity of life. Such misguided materialists remind one of the famous sonnet of Keats "On Fame," which, read, so to speak, in the feminine gender, might appropriately be entitled "On Social

Ambition":

How fever'd is the man who cannot look

Upon his mortal days with temperate blood, Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, And robs his fair name of its maidenhood: It is as if the rose should pluck herself,

Or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom; As if a Naiad, like a meddling elf, Should darken her pure grot with muddy gloom. But the rose leaves herself upon the brier,

For winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed, And the ripe plum still wears its dim attire, The undisturbed lake has crystal space; Why then should man, teasing the world for grace, Spoil his salvation for a fierce miscreed?

These tendencies are worth more than cursory attention from the student of American life. The effect of this wide-spread social unrest cannot but be detrimental to the children born of such mothers, and, so far as cities are concerned, to the national character. We have long been a nation of eagerly competitive men; if now the mothers (naturally nervous and of delicate organization compared with foreign women) are to give themselves over to a struggle for social su

premacy, one shudders to think what the next generation will lack of repose and wholesomeness.

Nobody living outside New York knows how difficult it has become here for people of moderate means to bring up their children in the love of genuine things. It is still done by many, but with increasing effort and only by dint of a strong will and an inheritance of the truest graces of life: simplicity, the domestic affections, and the love of nature and one's kind. It is to the cultivation of these graces that we must look for a rescue from the artificiality and the vulgarity of the pitiable circle in every American city known as "the smart set."

Against the tendencies here spoken of, there must be, before long, a strong revolt, and it will come about, not by ignoring them, but by individual dissatisfaction with them on the part of more of those among the richer class who are now just outside the vortex of this real social peril. Already contributing to this end are distinguished examples of public spirit, self-sacrifice, and wise benevolence on the part of rich Americans, both young and old.

Maxfield Parrish's Western Pictures.

AT various times our artists have brought from the far West pictures that were revelations to eyes not familiar with those regions. Bierstadt's canvases were not of the rich, modern school, but they told in a novel way an interesting and picturesque story. Thomas Moran's pictures, espe cially of the then newly discovered Yellowstone, were astonishing and marvelous statements; they told a story of intense color which was hardly bevirile drawings portrayed freshly and strongly lieved till ratified by many visitors. Remington's the rough life of the West.

The pictures of the Great Southwest made by Maxfield Parrish for THE CENTURY MAGAZINE are a new and striking pictorial contribution to the knowledge of that most interesting country. Those printed as contrasting frontispieces in the May number show something of their charm of color. Even the black-and-white renderings of them hint at this color, while they give accurately the largeness of view of these pictures, the fascination of their low horizons and enormous skies, their suggestion of loneliness. There is an understanding of the perspective of these mountains and plains that lives in the mind of an artist of imagination, and that strikes the imagination of those who look upon them.

Parrish is moved by a vivid sense of that loneliness to which we have referred. It seems that after drawing figures in a picture he would sometimes paint them out, feeling that they were an impertinence-that the picture with figures, or with too many figures, failed to convey one of the most characteristic features of the scene. This imaginative artist has, in his Western pictures, added a brilliant page to his exquisite accomplishment.